The Empire State, in all its decline

Today’s editorial: New York is about to lose two more House seats. How can voters trust state legislators to go about drawing new districts with the public interest in mind?

Bad news for New York. Bad news, that is, and then some more of it. Bad news, followed by the uneasy sense that the state’s leaders will make the worst of an unfortunate situation.

First comes the word from the Census Bureau that the rate of population growth was so sluggish over the past decade — just 2.1 percent, slower than in all but three other states — that New York will lose two more seats in Congress. Two House seats, on top of the two the state lost after the 2000 census. Come 2013, New York’s presence in Congress will be smaller than it’s been since 1823 — when James Madison was president.

That entrusts the wrong people, namely the members of the state Legislature, to redraw the congressional map for a state at risk of losing even more influence in Washington. Just 27 House seats for 19.2 million people will be up for grabs in the 2012 elections.

New Yorkers, we fear, are about to pay for the long refusal of the legislative leadership to cede control of redistricting to a nonpartisan, less political commission. The new congressional boundaries are more likely to represent the efforts of political status quo to divide the ever dwindling spoils than the best interests of the public at large. Fairly drawn districts and competitive elections aren’t the concerns of legislators reduced to making deals, especially when control of the Legislature itself is split between the two major parties. They haven’t been in the past, certainly.

The political pressure and potential for mischief can only get worse, too, when the task at hand probably means putting two incumbent House members out of business. That at, least, doesn’t happen in the state Legislature — with districts also drawn by legislators themselves. The Legislature is actually bigger than it was after the 2000 census, with 62 seats in the Senate, rather than 61.

It would take an amendment to the state constitution to fix congressional and legislative redistricting once and for all. That, alas, wouldn’t affect congressional races until 2022, at the earliest. The leaders of the Legislature — and Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo, too, of course — should consider themselves on notice even now. Drawing election maps is just too important to leave to as self-interested a lot as the politicians who run for these seats.

There’s another task for the people who run this state, too. They need to stop the loss of congressional representation that comes with such stagnant population growth. That means easing the statewide tax burden, making New York an easier and more hospitable place to do business and cleaning up the culture of political corruption.

Nothing less than the future of what once was indisputably the Empire State hangs in the balance.